Editing Shibboleth (software) (section)

==History==
The Shibboleth project grew out of Internet2. Today, the project is managed by the Shibboleth Consortium. Two of the most popular software components managed by the Shibboleth Consortium are the Shibboleth Identity Provider and the Shibboleth Service Provider, both of which are implementations of [[SAML]].

The project was named after an [[Shibboleth|identifying passphrase]] used in the [[Bible]] ([[Book of Judges|Judges]] {{bibleverse-nb|Judges|12:4-6|NET}}) because [[Ephraimites]] were not able to pronounce "sh".

The Shibboleth project was started in 2000 to facilitate the sharing of resources between organizations with incompatible [[Authentication and authorization infrastructure|authentication and authorization infrastructures]]. [[Software architecture|Architectural work]] was performed for over a year prior to any software development. After development and testing, Shibboleth IdP 1.0 was released in July 2003.<ref>{{cite mailing list |url=https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/i2-news/2003-07/msg00000.html |last=Pollack |first=Michelle |title=I2-News: Internet2 Releases Privacy-Preserving Web Authorizing Software |date=2003-07-01 |accessdate=2007-11-28 |archive-date=2012-12-13 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121213000159/https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/i2-news/2003-07/msg00000.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> This was followed by the release of Shibboleth IdP 1.3 in August 2005.

Version 2.0 of the Shibboleth software was a major upgrade released in March 2008.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://lists.internet2.edu/sympa/arc/shibboleth-users/2008-03/msg00289.html |title=Shibboleth 2.0 Available}}</ref> It included both IdP and SP components, but, more importantly, Shibboleth 2.0 supported SAML 2.0.

The Shibboleth and SAML protocols were developed during the same timeframe. From the beginning, Shibboleth was based on SAML, but, where SAML was found lacking, Shibboleth improvised, and the Shibboleth developers implemented features that compensated for missing features in [[SAML 1.1]]. Some of these features were later incorporated into [[SAML 2.0]], and, in that sense, Shibboleth contributed to the evolution of the SAML protocol.

Perhaps the most important contributed feature was the legacy Shibboleth AuthnRequest protocol. Since the SAML 1.1 protocol was inherently an IdP-first protocol, Shibboleth invented a simple HTTP-based authentication request protocol that turned SAML 1.1 into an SP-first protocol. This protocol was first implemented in Shibboleth IdP 1.0 and later refined in Shibboleth IdP 1.3.

Building on that early work, the [[Liberty Alliance]] introduced a fully expanded AuthnRequest protocol into the Liberty Identity Federation Framework. Eventually, Liberty ID-FF 1.2 was contributed to OASIS, which formed the basis for the OASIS SAML 2.0 Standard.{{importance inline|date=January 2019}}